Author: anika

With his Bella Union debut album How To Die In The North due for release 19th Januray, BC Camplight has just announced news of a number of UK shows for early next year and unveiled a brilliant video for current single “Just Because I Love You”.

Written and directed by Seth Fuller, and featuring a brief cameo from BC Camplight himself, this sobering melodrama encapsulates the bitter-sweet taste of love gone wrong.

Lost treasure needn’t be found in the distant past; the 21st century hides many artists who disappeared into the great wide yonder. BC Camplight is one such example. The alter-ego of American songwriter Brian Christinzio released albums in 2005 and 2007, both gems of a certain psych-pop vintage, combining eloquent songwriting with a self-destructive bent. Christinzio certainly knew it – he’s described himself as, “the guy who blew it.”

But this sublime talent with the keening vocal and fearless approach to lyrical introspection has another chance. His new album ‘How To Die In The North’, recorded in his newly adopted home of Manchester, England, is a fantastically rich, stylistically diverse trip. From dramatic, layered pop to a haunted take on Sixties sunshine-pop, from blue-eyed soul to speedy surf-pop, from sparser piano balladry to psychedelic showstoppers and a grand finale that’s part Nilsson and part Broadway showtune.

Originally from New Jersey, Christinzio started playing piano aged just four, inspired by his mum’s Jerry Lee Lewis and Nilsson records and his Dad’s classical collection. Depression and crippling hypochondria clashed with captaining the football team and a penchant for boxing. Post-school, he fell in with people, “willing to go through shit to be a musician,” which saw him relocate to Philadelphia where he occasionally played live with Philly faves The War On Drugs and guested on Sharon Van Etten’s album ‘Epic’.

He’s already done two sessions for long-term fan Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music, which featured Christinzio’s band of Mancunians who he met at The Castle Hotel pub, a watering hole in the city centre particularly popular with musicians. Christinzio also heard John Grant’s album on the jukebox there, which encouraged him to approach Bella Union. Grant’s cocktail of depression and self-sabotage thwarted an outrageous talent, but he took his second chance. The same deserves to happen to Christinzio, a similarly outsize, sharp and funny personality with a non-conformist streak. Far from dying, BC Camplight has been reborn in the North.

MARISSA NADLER, whose July LP was released in February on Bella Union to much critical acclaim, has just released the digital EP Before July: Demos & Unreleased Songs. Her cover of Elliott Smith’s “Pitseleh” is now streaming HERE.

Before going into Avast Studios, Nadler spent many months writing and recording songs that would become her album July. The multi-tracked vocal approach to the demo sessions helped to create the richly layered harmonies that are showcased on the Randall Dunn-produced album. “Leave The Light On” and “The Rose City” are both unheard demos from this writing period. “The Rose City” would later lead to the creation of both “Drive” and “Holiday In” in terms of its lyrical content. The EP also features “Dead City Emily” and “1923” in their early form, containing different lyrics and melodies.

Nadler, a longtime Elliott Smith fan, learned “Pitseleh” and “The White Lady Loves You More” for a tribute to the late songwriter in Brooklyn last year at Glasslands. She later recorded a proper cover of “Pitseleh” after the tribute concert’s success.

Nadler has just returned from extensive touring of Europe and North America and is currently writing a follow-up to July.

Following many excellent reviews for new album Weatherhouse, PHILIP SELWAY has just unveiled a brilliantly inventive video to new single ‘Around Again’ directed by acclaimed Spanish film-makers NYSU. Speaking about the video, NYSU say “The song talks about the feeling of being always “around” the same place again, so we wanted to represent this… but literally. That’s why we thought in a circular way to tell two parallel stories inside the same space and time. Deform the straight narrative line and make it a curve. We love to tell the classic movie script full of envy and revenge but in a complex visual language.”